Till this last week, the weather was pertinaciously cold and windy; and I
had resolved to go to Worcester, which lies in a ‘Kessel’, and is really
hot. But now the glorious African summer is come, and I believe this is
the weather of Paradise. I got up at four this morning, when the
Dutchmen who had slept here were starting in their carts and waggons. It
was quite light; but the moon shone brilliantly still, and had put on a
bright rose-coloured veil, borrowed from the rising sun on the opposite
horizon. The freshness (without a shadow of cold or damp) of the air was
indescribable—no dew was on the ground. I went up the hill-side, along
the ‘Sloot’ (channel, which supplies all our water), into the ‘Kloof’
between the mountains, and clambered up to the ‘Venster Klip’, from which
natural window the view is very fine. The flowers are all gone and the
grass all dead. Rhenoster boschjes and Hottentot fig are green
everywhere, and among the rocks all manner of shrubs, and far too much
‘Wacht een beetje’ (_Wait a bit_), a sort of series of natural
fish-hooks, which try the robustest patience. Between seven and eight,
the sun gets rather hot, and I came in and _tubbed_, and sat on the stoep
(a sort of terrace, in front of every house in South Africa). I
breakfast at nine, sit on the stoep again till the sun comes round, and
then retreat behind closed shutters from the stinging sun. The _air_ is
fresh and light all day, though the sun is tremendous; but one has no
languid feeling or desire to lie about, unless one is sleepy. We dine at
two or half-past, and at four or five the heat is over, and one puts on a
shawl to go out in the afternoon breeze. The nights are cool, so as
always to want one blanket. I still have a cough; but it is getting
better, so that I can always eat and walk. Mine host has just bought a
horse, which he is going to try with a petticoat to-day, and if he goes
well I shall ride.
I like this inn-life, because I see all the ‘neighbourhood’—farmers and
traders—whom I like far better than the _gentility_ of Capetown. I have
given letters to England to a ‘boer’, who is ‘going home’, i.e. to
Europe, the _first of his race since the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes_, when some poor refugees were inveigled hither by the Dutch
Governor, and oppressed worse than the Hottentots. M. de Villiers has
had no education _at all_, and has worked, and traded, and farmed,—but
the breed tells; he is a pure and thorough Frenchman, unable to speak a
word of French. When I went in to dinner, he rose and gave me a chair
with a bow which, with his appearance, made me ask, ‘_Monsieur vient
d’arriver_?’ This at once put him out and pleased him. He is very
unlike a Dutchman. If you think that any of the French will feel as I
felt to this far-distant brother of theirs, pray give him a few letters;
but remember that he can speak only English and Dutch, and a little
German. Here his name is _called_ ‘Filljee’, but I told him to drop that
barbarism in Europe; De Villiers ought to speak for itself. He says they
came from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.
The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are great
cronies of mine—stout old greybeards, toddling down the hill together. I
sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old bachelors, and they
take it as a great compliment; and Heer Klein gave me my letters all
decked with flowers, and wished ‘Vrolyke tydings, Mevrouw,’ most
heartily. He has also made his tributary mail-cart Hottentots bring from
various higher mountain ranges the beautiful everlasting flowers, which
will make pretty wreaths for J—. When I went to his house to thank him,
I found a handsome Malay, with a basket of ‘Klipkaus’, a shell-fish much
esteemed here. Old Klein told me they were sent him by a Malay who was
born in his father’s house, a slave, and had been _his_ ‘_boy_’ and
play-fellow. Now, the slave is far richer than the old young master, and
no waggon comes without a little gift—oranges, fish, &c.—for ‘Wilhem’.
When Klein goes to Capetown, the old Malay seats him in a grand chair and
sits on a little wooden stool at his feet; Klein begs him, as ‘Huisheer’,
to sit properly; but, ‘Neen Wilhem, Ik zal niet; ik kan niet vergeten.’
‘Good boy!’ said old Klein; ‘good people the Malays.’ It is a relief,
after the horrors one has heard of Dutch cruelty, to see such an
‘idyllisches Verhältniss’. I have heard other instances of the same
fidelity from Malays, but they were utterly unappreciated, and only told
to prove the excellence of slavery, and ‘how well the rascals must have
been off’.
I have fallen in love with a Hottentot baby here. Her mother is all
black, with a broad face and soft spaniel eyes, and the father is
Bastaard; but the baby (a girl, nine months old), has walked out of one
of Leonardo da Vinci’s pictures. I never saw so beautiful a child. She
has huge eyes with the spiritual look he gives to them, and is exquisite
in every way. When the Hottentot blood is handsome, it is beautiful;
there is a delicacy and softness about some of the women which is very
pretty, and the eyes are those of a _good_ dog. Most of them are
hideous, and nearly all drink; but they are very clean and honest. Their
cottages are far superior in cleanliness to anything out of England,
except in picked places, like some parts of Belgium; and they wash as
much as they can, with the bad water-supply, and the English outcry if
they strip out of doors to bathe. Compared to French peasants, they are
very clean indeed, and even the children are far more decent and cleanly
in their habits than those of France. The woman who comes here to clean
and scour is a model of neatness in her work and her person (quite
black), but she gets helplessly drunk as soon as she has a penny to buy a
glass of wine; for a penny, a half-pint tumbler of very strong and
remarkably nasty wine is sold at the canteens.
I have many more ‘humours’ to tell, but A— can show you all the long
story I have written. I hope it does not seem very stale and _decies
repetita_. All being new and curious to the eye here, one becomes
long-winded about mere trifles.
One small thing more. The first few shillings that a coloured woman has
to spend on her cottage go in—what do you think?—A grand toilet table of
worked muslin over pink, all set out with little ‘_objets_’—such as they
are: if there is nothing else, there is that here, as at Capetown, and
all along to Simon’s Bay. Now, what is the use or comfort of a
_duchesse_ to a Hottentot family? I shall never see those toilets again
without thinking of Hottentots—what a baroque association of ideas! I
intend, in a day or two, to go over to ‘Gnadenthal’, the Moravian
missionary station, founded in 1736—the ‘blühende Gemeinde von
Hottentoten’. How little did I think to see it, when we smiled at the
phrase in old Mr. Steinkopf’s sermon years ago in London! The
_missionarized_ Hottentots are not, as it is said, thought well of—being
even tipsier than the rest; but I may see a full-blood one, and even a
true Bosjesman, which is worth a couple of hours’ drive; and the place is
said to be beautiful.
This climate is evidently a styptic of great power, I shall write a few
lines to the _Lancet_ about Caledon and its hot baths—‘Bad Caledon’, as
the Germans at Houw Hoek call it. The baths do not concern me, as they
are chalybeate; but they seem very effectual in many cases. Yet English
people never come here; they stay at Capetown, which must be a furnace
now, or at Wynberg, which is damp and chill (comparatively); at most,
they get to Stellenbosch. I mean visitors, not settlers; _they_ are
everywhere. I look the colour of a Hottentot. Now I _must_ leave off.
Your most affectionate
L. D. G.
LETTER VII
GNADENTHAL
Caledon, Jan. 28th.
WELL, I have been to Gnadenthal, and seen the ‘blooming parish’, and a
lovely spot it is. A large village nestled in a deep valley, surrounded
by high mountains on three sides, and a lower range in front. We started
early on Saturday, and drove over a mighty queer road, and through a
river. Oh, ye gods! what a shaking and pounding! We were rattled up
like dice in a box. Nothing but a Cape cart, Cape horses, and a
Hottentot driver, above all, could have accomplished it. Captain D—
rode, and had the best of it. On the road we passed three or four farms,
at all which horses were _galloping out_ the grain, or men were winnowing
it by tossing it up with wooden shovels to let the wind blow away the
chaff. We did the twenty-four miles up and down the mountain roads in
two hours and a half, with our valiant little pair of horses; it is
incredible how they go. We stopped at a nice cottage on the hillside
belonging to a _ci-devant_ slave, one Christian Rietz, a _white_ man,
with brown woolly hair, sharp features, grey eyes, and _not_ woolly
moustaches. He said he was a ‘Scotch bastaard’, and ‘le bon sang
parlait—très-haut même’, for a more thriving, shrewd, sensible fellow I
never saw. His _father_ and master had had to let him go when all slaves
were emancipated, and he had come to Gnadenthal. He keeps a little inn
in the village, and a shop and a fine garden. The cottage we lodged in
was on the mountain side, and had been built for his son, who was dead;
and his adopted daughter, a pretty coloured girl, exactly like a southern
Frenchwoman, waited on us, assisted by about six or seven other women,
who came chiefly to stare. Vrouw Rietz was as black as a coal, but _so_
pretty!—a dear, soft, sleek, old lady, with beautiful eyes, and the kind
pleasant ways which belong to nice blacks; and, though old and fat, still
graceful and lovely in face, hands, and arms. The cottage was thus:—One
large hall; my bedroom on the right, S—’s on the left; the kitchen behind
me; Miss Rietz behind S—; mud floors daintily washed over with fresh
cow-dung; ceiling of big rafters, just as they had grown, on which rested
bamboo canes close together _across_ the rafters, and bound together
between each, with transverse bamboo—a pretty _beehivey_ effect; at top,
mud again, and then a high thatched roof and a loft or zolder for forage,
&c.; the walls of course mud, very thick and whitewashed. The bedrooms
tiny; beds, clean sweet melies (maize) straw, with clean sheets, and
eight good pillows on each; glass windows (a great distinction),
exquisite cleanliness, and hearty civility; good food, well cooked;
horrid tea and coffee, and hardly any milk; no end of fruit. In all the
gardens it hung on the trees thicker than the leaves. Never did I behold
such a profusion of fruit and vegetables.
But first I must tell what struck me most, I asked one of the Herrenhut
brethren whether there were any _real_ Hottentots, and he said, ‘Yes,
one;’ and next morning, as I sat waiting for early prayers under the big
oak-trees in the Plaats (square), he came up, followed by a tiny old man
hobbling along with a long stick to support him. ‘Here’, said he, ‘is
the _last_ Hottentot; he is a hundred and seven years old, and lives all
alone.’ I looked on the little, wizened, yellow face, and was shocked
that he should be dragged up like a wild beast to be stared at. A
feeling of pity which felt like remorse fell upon me, and my eyes filled
as I rose and stood before him, so tall and like a tyrant and oppressor,
while he uncovered his poor little old snow-white head, and peered up in
my face. I led him to the seat, and helped him to sit down, and said in
Dutch, ‘Father, I hope you are not tired; you are old.’ He saw and heard
as well as ever, and spoke good Dutch in a firm voice. ‘Yes, I am above
a hundred years old, and alone—quite alone.’ I sat beside him, and he
put his head on one side, and looked curiously up at me with his faded,
but still piercing little wild eyes. Perhaps he had a perception of what
I felt—yet I hardly think so; perhaps he thought I was in trouble, for he
crept close up to me, and put one tiny brown paw into my hand, which he
stroked with the other, and asked (like most coloured people) if I had
children. I said, ‘Yes, at home in England;’ and he patted my hand
again, and said, ‘God bless them!’ It was a relief to feel that he was
pleased, for I should have felt like a murderer if my curiosity had added
a moment’s pain to so tragic a fate.
This may sound like sentimentalism; but you cannot conceive the effect of
looking on the last of a race once the owners of all this land, and now
utterly gone. His look was not quite human, physically speaking;—a good
head, small wild-beast eyes, piercing and restless; cheek-bones strangely
high and prominent, nose _quite_ flat, mouth rather wide; thin shapeless
lips, and an indescribably small, long, pointed chin, with just a very
little soft white woolly beard; his head covered with extremely short
close white wool, which ended round the poll in little ringlets. Hands
and feet like an English child of seven or eight, and person about the
size of a child of eleven. He had all his teeth, and though shrunk to
nothing, was very little wrinkled in the face, and not at all in the
hands, which were dark brown, while his face was yellow. His manner, and
way of speaking were like those of an old peasant in England, only his
voice was clearer and stronger, and his perceptions not blunted by age.
He had travelled with one of the missionaries in the year 1790, or
thereabouts, and remained with them ever since.
I went into the church—a large, clean, rather handsome building,
consecrated in 1800—and heard a very good sort of Litany, mixed with such
singing as only black voices can produce. The organ was beautifully
played by a Bastaard lad. The Herrenhuters use very fine chants, and the
perfect ear and heavenly voices of a large congregation, about six
hundred, all coloured people, made music more beautiful than any
chorus-singing I ever heard.
Prayers lasted half an hour; then the congregation turned out of doors,
and the windows were opened. Some of the people went away, and others
waited for the ‘allgemeine Predigt’. In a quarter of an hour a much
larger congregation than the first assembled, the girls all with
net-handkerchiefs tied round their heads so as to look exactly like the
ancient Greek head-dress with a double fillet—the very prettiest and
neatest coiffure I ever saw. The gowns were made like those of English
girls of the same class, but far smarter, cleaner, and gayer in
colour—pink, and green, and yellow, and bright blue; several were all in
white, with white gloves. The men and women sit separate, and the
women’s side was a bed of tulips. The young fellows were very smart
indeed, with muslin or gauze, either white, pink, or blue, rolled round
their hats (that is universal here, on account of the sun). The
Hottentots, as they are called—that is, those of mixed Dutch and
Hottentot origin (correctly, ‘bastaards’)—have a sort of blackguard
elegance in their gait and figure which is peculiar to them; a mixture of
negro or Mozambique blood alters it altogether. The girls have the
elegance without the blackguard look; _all_ are slender, most are tall;
all graceful, all have good hands and feet; some few are handsome in the
face and many very interesting-looking. The complexion is a pale
olive-yellow, and the hair more or less woolly, face flat, and cheekbones
high, eyes small and bright. These are by far the most
intelligent—equal, indeed, to whites. A mixture of black blood often
gives real beauty, but takes off from the ‘air’, and generally from the
talent; but then the blacks are so pleasant, and the Hottentots are
taciturn and reserved. The old women of this breed are the grandest hags
I ever saw; they are clean and well dressed, and tie up their old faces
in white handkerchiefs like corpses,—faces like those of Andrea del
Sarto’s old women; they are splendid. Also, they are very clean people,
addicted to tubbing more than any others. The maid-of-all-work, who
lounges about your breakfast table in rags and dishevelled hair, has been
in the river before you were awake, or, if that was too far off, in a
tub. They are also far cleaner in their huts than any but the _very
best_ English poor.
The ‘Predigt’ was delivered, after more singing, by a missionary
cabinet-maker, in Dutch, very ranting, and not very wise; the
congregation was singularly decorous and attentive, but did not seem at
all excited or impressed—just like a well-bred West-end audience, only
rather more attentive. The service lasted three-quarters of an hour,
including a short prayer and two hymns. The people came out and filed
off in total silence, and very quickly, the tall graceful girls draping
their gay silk shawls beautifully. There are seven missionaries, all in
orders but one, the blacksmith, and all married, except the resident
director of the boys’ boarding-school; there is a doctor, a carpenter, a
cabinet-maker, a shoe-maker, and a storekeeper—a very agreeable man, who
had been missionary in Greenland and Labrador, and interpreter to
MacClure. There is one ‘Studirter Theolog’. All are Germans, and so are
their wives. My friend the storekeeper married without having ever
beheld his wife before they met at the altar, and came on board ship at
once with her. He said it was as good a way of marrying as any other,
and that they were happy together. She was lying in, so I did not see
her. At eight years old, their children are all sent home to Germany to
be educated, and they seldom see them again. On each side of the church
are schools, and next to them the missionaries’ houses on one side of the
square, and on the other a row of workshops, where the Hottentots are
taught all manner of trades. I have got a couple of knives, made at
Gnadenthal, for the children. The girls occupy the school in the
morning, and the boys in the afternoon; half a day is found quite enough
of lessons in this climate. The infant school was of both sexes, but a
different set morning and afternoon. The missionaries’ children were in
the infant school; and behind the little blonde German ‘Mädels’ three jet
black niggerlings rolled over each other like pointer-pups, and grinned,
and didn’t care a straw for the spelling; while the dingy yellow little
bastaards were straining their black eyes out, with eagerness to answer
the master’s questions. He and the mistress were both Bastaards, and he
seemed an excellent teacher. The girls were learning writing from a
master, and Bible history from a mistress, also people of colour; and the
stupid set (mostly black) were having spelling hammered into their thick
skulls by another yellow mistress, in another room. At the boarding
school were twenty lads, from thirteen up to twenty, in training for
school-teachers at different stations. Gnadenthal supplies the Church of
England with them, as well as their own stations. There were Caffres,
Fingoes, a Mantatee, one boy evidently of some Oriental blood, with
glossy, smooth hair and a copper skin—and the rest Bastaards of various
hues, some mixed with black, probably Mozambique. The Caffre lads were
splendid young Hercules’. They had just printed the first book in the
Caffre language (I’ve got it for Dr. Hawtrey,)—extracts from the New
Testament,—and I made them read the sheets they were going to bind; it is
a beautiful language, like Spanish in tone, only with a queer ‘click’ in
it. The boys drew, like Chinese, from ‘copies’, and wrote like
copper-plate; they sang some of Mendelssohn’s choruses from ‘St. Paul’
splendidly, the Caffres rolling out soft rich bass voices, like melodious
thunder. They are clever at handicrafts, and fond of geography and
natural history, incapable of mathematics, quick at languages, utterly
incurious about other nations, and would all rather work in the fields
than learn anything but music; good boys, honest, but ‘_trotzig_’. So
much for Caffres, Fingoes, &c. The Bastaards are as clever as whites,
and more docile—so the ‘rector’ told me. The boy who played the organ
sang the ‘Lorelei’ like an angel, and played us a number of waltzes and
other things on the piano, but he was too shy to talk; while the Caffres
crowded round me, and chattered away merrily. The Mantatees, whom I
cannot distinguish from Caffres, are scattered all over the colony, and
rival the English as workmen and labourers—fine stalwart, industrious
fellows. Our little ‘boy’ Kleenboy hires a room for fifteen shillings a
month, and takes in his compatriots as lodgers at half a crown a week—the
usurious little rogue! His chief, one James, is a bricklayer here, and
looks and behaves like a prince. It is fine to see his black arms,
ornamented with silver bracelets, hurling huge stones about.
All Gnadenthal is wonderfully fruitful, being well watered, but it is not
healthy for whites; I imagine, too hot and damp. There are three or four
thousand coloured people there, under the control of the missionaries,
who allow no canteens at all. The people may have what they please at
home, but no public drinking-place is allowed, and we had to take our own
beer and wine for the three days. The gardens and burial-ground are
beautiful, and the square is entirely shaded by about ten or twelve
superb oaks; nothing prettier can be conceived. It is not popular in the
neighbourhood. ‘You see it makes the d-d niggers cheeky’ to have homes
of their own—and the girls are said to be immoral. As to that, there are
no so-called ‘morals’ among the coloured people, and how or why should
there? It is an honour to one of these girls to have a child by a white
man, and it is a degradation to him to marry a dark girl. A pious stiff
old Dutchwoman who came here the other day for the Sacrament (which takes
place twice a year), had one girl with her, big with child by her son,
who also came for the Sacrament, and two in the straw at home by the
other son; this caused her exactly as much emotion as I feel when my cat
kittens. No one takes any notice, either to blame or to nurse the poor
things—they scramble through it as pussy does. The English are almost
equally contemptuous; but there is one great difference. My host, for
instance, always calls a black ‘a d-d nigger’; but if that nigger is
wronged or oppressed he fights for him, or bails him out of the Tronk,
and an English jury gives a just verdict; while a Dutch one simply finds
for a Dutchman, against any one else, and _always_ against a dark man. I
believe this to be true, from what I have seen and heard; and certainly
the coloured people have a great preference for the English.
I am persecuted by the ugliest and blackest Mozambiquer I have yet seen,
a bricklayer’s labourer, who can speak English, and says he was servant
to an English Captain—‘Oh, a good fellow he was, only he’s dead!’ He now
insists on my taking him as a servant. ‘I dessay your man at home is a
good chap, and I’ll be a good boy, and cook very nice.’ He is thick-set
and short and strong. Nature has adorned him with a cock eye and a yard
of mouth, and art, with a prodigiously tall white chimney-pot hat with
the crown out, a cotton nightcap, and a wondrous congeries of rags. He
professes to be cook, groom, and ‘walley’, and is sure you would be
pleased with his attentions.
Well, to go back to Gnadenthal. I wandered all over the village on
Sunday afternoon, and peeped into the cottages. All were neat and clean,
with good dressers of crockery, the _very_ poorest, like the worst in
Weybridge sandpits; but they had no glass windows, only a wooden shutter,
and no doors; a calico curtain, or a sort of hurdle supplying its place.
The people nodded and said ‘Good day!’ but took no further notice of me,
except the poor old Hottentot, who was seated on a doorstep. He rose and
hobbled up to meet me and take my hand again. He seemed to enjoy being
helped along and seated down carefully, and shook and patted my hand
repeatedly when I took leave of him. At this the people stared a good
deal, and one woman came to talk to me.
In the evening I sat on a bench in the square, and saw the people go in
to ‘Abendsegen’. The church was lighted, and as I sat there and heard
the lovely singing, I thought it was impossible to conceive a more
romantic scene. On Monday I saw all the schools, and then looked at the
great strong Caffre lads playing in the square. One of them stood to be
pelted by five or six others, and as the stones came, he twisted and
turned and jumped, and was hardly ever hit, and when he was, he didn’t
care, though the others hurled like catapults. It was the most wonderful
display of activity and grace, and quite incredible that such a huge
fellow should be so quick and light. When I found how comfortable dear
old Mrs. Rietz made me, I was sorry I had hired the cart and kept it to
take me home, for I would gladly have stayed longer, and the heat did me
no harm; but I did not like to throw away a pound or two, and drove back
that evening. Mrs. Rietz, told me her mother was a Mozambiquer. ‘And
your father?’ said I. ‘Oh, I don’t know. _My mother was only a slave_.’
She, too, was a slave, but said she ‘never knew it’, her ‘missus’ was so
good; a Dutch lady, at a farm I had passed, on the road, who had a
hundred and fifty slaves. I liked my Hottentot hut amazingly, and the
sweet brown bread, and the dinner cooked so cleanly on the bricks in the
kitchen. The walls were whitewashed and adorned with wreaths of
everlasting flowers and some quaint old prints from Loutherburg—pastoral
subjects, not exactly edifying.
Well, I have prosed unconscionably, so adieu for the present.
_February_ 3_d_.—Many happy returns of your birthday, dear —. I had a
bottle of champagne to drink your health, and partly to swell the bill,
which these good people make so moderate, that I am half ashamed. I get
everything that Caledon can furnish for myself and S— for 15_l._ a month.
On Saturday we got the sad news of Prince Albert’s death, and it created
real consternation here. What a thoroughly unexpected calamity! Every
one is already dressed in deep mourning. It is more general than in a
village of the same size at home—(how I have caught the colonial trick of
always saying ‘home’ for England! Dutchmen who can barely speak English,
and never did or will see England, equally talk of ‘news from home’). It
also seems, by the papers of the 24th of December, which came by a
steamer the other day, that war is imminent. I shall have to wait for
convoy, I suppose, as I object to walking the plank from a Yankee
privateer. I shall wait here for the next mail, and then go back to
Capetown, stopping by the way, so as to get there early in March, and
arrange for my voyage. The weather had a relapse into cold, and an
attempt at rain. Pity it failed, for the drought is dreadful this year,
chiefly owing to the unusual quantity of sharp drying winds—a most
unlucky summer for the country and for me.
My old friend Klein, who told me several instances of the kindness and
gratitude of former slaves, poured out to me the misery he had undergone
from the ‘ingratitude’ of a certain Rosina, a slave-girl of his. She was
in her youth handsome, clever, the best horsebreaker, bullock-trainer and
driver, and hardest worker in the district. She had two children by
Klein, then a young fellow; six by another white man, and a few more by
two husbands of her own race! But she was of a rebellious spirit, and
took to drink. After the emancipation, she used to go in front of
Klein’s windows and read the statute in a loud voice on every anniversary
of the day; and as if that did not enrage him enough, she pertinaciously
(whenever she was a little drunk) kissed him by main force every time she
met him in the street, exclaiming, ‘Aha! when I young and pretty
slave-girl you make kiss me then; now I ugly, drunk, dirty old devil and
free woman, I kiss you!’ Frightful retributive justice! I struggled
hard to keep my countenance, but the fat old fellow’s good-humoured,
rueful face was too much for me. His tormentor is dead, but he retains a
painful impression of her ‘ingratitude ‘.
Our little Mantatee ‘Kleenboy’ has again, like Jeshurun, ‘waxed fat and
kicked’, as soon as he had eaten enough to be once more plump and shiny.
After his hungry period, he took to squatting on the stoep, just in front
of the hall-door, and altogether declining to do anything; so he is
superseded by an equally ugly little red-headed Englishman. The Irish
housemaid has married the German baker (a fine match for her!), and a
dour little Scotch Presbyterian has come up from Capetown in her place.
Such are the vicissitudes of colonial house-keeping! The only
‘permanency’ is the old soldier of Captain D—’s regiment, who is barman
in the canteen, and not likely to leave ‘his honour’, and the coloured
girl, who improves on acquaintance. She wants to ingratiate herself with
me, and get taken to England. Her father is an Englishman, and of course
the brown mother and her large family always live in the fear of his
‘going home’ and ignoring their existence; a _marriage_ with the mother
of his children would be too much degradation for him to submit to. Few
of the coloured people are ever married, but they don’t separate oftener
than _really_ married folks. Bill, the handsome West Indian black,
married my pretty washerwoman Rosalind, and was thought rather assuming
because he was asked in church and lawfully married; and she wore a
handsome lilac silk gown and a white wreath and veil, and very well she
looked in them. She had a child of two years old, which did not at all
disconcert Bill; but he continues to be dignified, and won’t let her go
and wash clothes in the river, because the hot sun makes her ill, and it
is not fit work for women.
_Sunday_, 9_th_.—Last night a dance took place in a house next door to
this, and a party of boers attempted to go in, but were repulsed by a
sortie of the young men within. Some of the more peaceable boers came in
here and wanted ale, which was refused, as they were already very
_vinous_; so they imbibed ginger-beer, whereof one drank thirty-four
bottles to his own share! Inspired by this drink, they began to quarrel,
and were summarily turned out. They spent the whole night, till five
this morning, scuffling and vociferating in the street. The constables
discreetly stayed in bed, displaying the true Dogberry spirit, which
leads them to take up Hottentots, drunk or sober, to show their zeal, but
carefully to avoid meddling with stalwart boers, from six to six and a
half feet high and strong in proportion. The jabbering of Dutch brings
to mind Demosthenes trying to outroar a stormy sea with his mouth full of
pebbles. The hardest blows are those given with the tongue, though much
pulling of hair and scuffling takes place. ‘Verdomde
Schmeerlap!’—‘Donder and Bliksem! am I a verdomde Schmeerlap?’—‘Ja, u
is,’ &c., &c. I could not help laughing heartily as I lay in bed, at
hearing the gambols of these Titan cubs; for this is a boer’s notion of
enjoying himself. This morning, I hear, the street was strewn with the
hair they had pulled out of each other’s heads. All who come here make
love to S—; not by describing their tender feelings, but by enumerating
the oxen, sheep, horses, land, money, &c., of which they are possessed,
and whereof, by the law of this colony, she would become half-owner on
marriage. There is a fine handsome Van Steen, who is very persevering;
but S— does not seem to fancy becoming Mevrouw at all. The demand for
English girls as wives is wonderful here. The nasty cross little ugly
Scotch maid has had three offers already, in one fortnight!
_February_ 18_th_.—I expect to receive the letters by the English mail
to-morrow morning, and to go to Worcester on Thursday. On Saturday the
young doctor—good-humoured, jolly, big, young Dutchman—drove me, with his
pretty little greys, over to two farms; at one I ate half a huge melon,
and at the other, uncounted grapes. We poor Europeans don’t know what
fruit _can be_, I must admit. The melon was a foretaste of paradise, and
the grapes made one’s fingers as sticky as honey, and had a muscat
fragrance quite inconceivable. They looked like amber eggs. The best of
it is, too, that in this climate stomach-aches are not. We all eat
grapes, peaches, and figs, all day long. Old Klein sends me, for my own
daily consumption, about thirty peaches, three pounds of grapes, and
apples, pears, and figs besides—‘just a little taste of fruits’; only
here they will pick it all unripe.
_February_ 19_th_.—The post came in late last night, and old Klein kindly
sent me my letters at near midnight. The post goes out this evening, and
the hot wind is blowing, so I can only write to you, and a line to my
mother. I feel really better now. I think the constant eating of grapes
has done me much good.
The Dutch cart-owner was so extortionate, that I am going to wait a few
days, and write to my dear Malay to come up and drive me back. It is
better than having to fight the Dutch monopolist in every village, and
getting drunken drivers and bad carts after all. I shall go round all
the same. The weather has been beautiful; to-day there is a wind, which
comes about two or three times in the year: it is not depressing, but
hot, and a bore, because one must shut every window or be stifled with
dust.
The people are burning the veld all about, and the lurid smoke by day and
flaming hill-sides by night are very striking. The ashes of the Bosh
serve as manure for the young grass, which will sprout in the autumn
rains. Such nights! Such a moon! I walk out after dark when it is mild
and clear, and can read any print by the moonlight, and see the distant
landscape as well as by day.
Old Klein has just sent me a haunch of bok, and the skin and hoofs, which
are pretty.